• Google Talk Adds a Chatback Widget

    Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

    Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily for the blog. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular blog to a thriving... → Learn More

    gtalk_logo.gifDo you really want random people on the Web IMing you? Google thinks so. Yesterday, it added a chatback widget to Google Talk that lets you put a little badge on your Website or blog linked to your Google Talk account. When you are available, visitors to your site can start an instant message conversation with you. This is a similar idea to all the call-me buttons that have proliferated from startups like Jajah, Jaxtr, Tringme, and GrandCentral (now part of Google). But keeping it to text chat makes more sense. IMs can be ignored easier than a ringing VoIP line.

    gtalk-chatback.pngStill, you are really asking to be distracted if you turn this feature on. Or disappointed. What if you put the badge on your site and no one wants to chat?

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